Forensic Nursing Chronicles

One of the ways my workplace tackles med error
is the introduction of barcoding for all meds along with electronic
scanners. When meds are taken out of pyxis, the nurse goes to the
patient’s room and turns on the computer to patient’s list. The nurse
scans the patient’s armband after verifying that she or he is right
patient. The scanner opens up the med admin record to reflect the
correct patient. Finally the nurse scans the med and the scanner pulls
up the med among the list to ensure that the nurse has scanned the
right med for the right patient. Other aspects of the five rights also
show up on the computer. The nurse uses this as another form of double
checking to ensure patient’s safety before adminstration of the drugs.
The barcode method was introduced about five months ago and my company
is happy to report it’s significance over these few months of effective
usage.

Original Post:
May 29, 2009
Title: Medication Errors
Many problems can arise from medications. Some are caused by the nurses and some are caused by the patients. Medication errors can occur quite often and do occur more than people think. medication errors can happen in a number of different ways; from wrong patient, dose, drug, any violation of the rights of the patient. They can also be caused by an overdose, under dose, even an extra dose. sometimes it can be caused from the dilution of the drug being wrong. The rate of the infusion can also cause and error and sometimes the integrity of the patients vein. Sometime when patient have problems swallowing medications the nurse will ask the physician to crush the medications. Some drugs are not made to be crushed they are made to bypass the stomach and absorb in the intestines, thus cause a medication error and possible toxicity from rapid absorption. The best way to prevent an error is to check and recheck all steps in your medication administration process. verify patient, drug, physician orders.

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This entry was posted on June 4, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Medication Error. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.